Ueno Park, The Second Outing!

So this is the chronicle of Ueno, day two.  On this day I went with Pascal and Naree again; it was the last such time that we went out together, I think.  To be honest I should have written this earlier, because I've forgotten a lot of things that happened!

We essentially had a nose around the park ala my first day in Ueno, (yesterday in chronological blog order).  It's always more fun to go around with good people though, so it was another good day.

Onto the pictures!


Or at least there would be pictures here, but the internet in this hostel is so bad that I can't upload any!  D'oh!

Ok so I hear the cries of, 'what the bloody hell is going on here then?!?!'  I don't know.  Prior to this she contorted  herself into the small blue bag behind her, and re-appeared with a couple of velcro eyes on her, that she proceeded to move around her body, inevitably ending up on her ass.  She then did a merry jig with this.

Everyone was so awed by her performance that all that could be heard was the occasional cough.

Still, a large number of people were gathered so maybe it's the Japanese way of showing appreciation, rapt attention with no sound might be the ultimate applause here...

Ok so this guy actually had demonstrable skill, unlike the prior 'entertainer.'  He plays the kind of music that you might here in a Chinese restaurant, the soft melody that's so relaxing.

It really is amazing how quickly he can move his hands around, and how deftly he moves around the board.

Ok so this is a random train that appeared before us in the park.

It turns out that the park has a mini railway around the edges for children and, bizarrely, couples.  Lots of couples.  Weird.

Anyway, not wanting to do anything by halves, they've stuck a big old steam loco out front.  The determination to stick out here is quite impressive.

This is another shot of the same train, this time vertically.  I don't know why I included two, I just felt like it I guess.

Ok so now for the serious portion of my blog.

There are lots of homeless here.  I don't know, statistically speaking, whether there are more here than in London, but one thing is certain; they're more visible.

We were walking around the park and noticed that there were fewer people heading over here, so we came and checked it out.

All the people in line are queing for food, donated by a christian charity.  Charity doesn't exist in Japan; this event is extremely rare.  The mindset of the Japanese isn't one that allows for donation normally, if someone is homeless it must be through a fault of their own.  This attitude is changing however, and it's surprising to see a christian organisation actually doing something helpful, rather than just trying to hold the world back, or abusing children.

Having said that the Japanese are, frankly, harsh, they do other things extremely well.

All their trains and train stations have lifts for disabled people, and all their doors have special notches that wheelchair ramps can connect to, so when a wheelchair user gets onto the train, a conductor (quickly and efficiently) slots a ramp onto the train, and he can quickly get on and off.  The whole process takes less than thirty seconds.

It seems to me that they frown upon those who have had opportunity and failed, but cater, discreetly, for those who were born with disabilities.  I don't know enough about their tax systems and social welfare systems to see how far this goes, but to have every bus be low floor, and every train be accessible for everyone without the need to modify anything, (i.e. these considerations were built into the fabric of the system) would seem to make them quite conscientious of everyone.

It's also worth noting that unlike England, where homeless people are harassed every hour of every day, told to move on and not stop anywhere, the police do nothing of the sort here.  They don't move people or arrest them for loitering, they just let them be.

This does create areas where native Japanese don't go, because they think it's dirty or unsafe, but coming from London, I'd trust these people with my children, they're that harmless.

The difference in these areas is almost complete, between England and Japan.

The English would rather not see the homeless, despite knowing they're all about the place; out of sight out of mind.

The Japanese would rather leave them be and not go to those areas.

The English give out charitable donations, to ease their guilt over being in a better position than the homeless; thereby helping those with less than them.

The Japanese don't have that same guilt.

The people wearing the blue shirts belong to the christian church giving out the food.

They also had a band playing, which was the initial draw for me, music of any kind is worth investigating and has led me to many interesting encounters!

I don't know how much food they had, or if it was enough to feed everyone, but there were thousands of people to be fed, and the queue, as you can see from the photos above, went beyond the depth of field of my camera.  It was massive.

I wonder what the average Japanese would think of this scene?  Or what the average English person would think of this happening in hyde park or trafalgar square?  Because Ueno is essentially comparable to those places in terms of tourist importance.

Ok so back to the lighthearted stuff.

If you've seen my videos section, (on the right hand side, it says youtube!) you will have seen TIM (the incredible machine) here!

It's amazing.  To see the amazing thing in action watch the video.  The movement makes this much more incredible to watch in full flow.

This giant pizza oven is some kind of shrine to some kind of god.  The pizza deity he shall now be known as.











More to come soon!

Ok, let's do this thang!

Check out my youtube videos for this guys crazy one man band contraption thing.  He made all the equipment himself, and custo designed it to fit into the bags on his bike.  He essentially travels around (thanks to his sponsor, seen on his bike and shirt etc) raising money for charity.  He goes all around the world, and he listed the countries he's been to; most of which I can't now remember.

He was the only performer who made an attempt to communicate with the big scary foreigners in English, which makes him a favourite of ours!

So we crashed on a bench looking over this lake, (the park is massive, so we needed a rest).  We just ended up sitting here, making fun of the people in the boats, (really big fat men sitting next to small women made the boats lean and end up going round in circles) and generally chatting.  We did this for two hours somehow...



Before

So this bird went around fishing the waters, having an amazing success rate.  It was walking around being terrorised by the carp in the lake, as well as us for a long time before getting bored and flying off, straight into one of the boats.

Click on the image to see the little tiny fish it caught, and I managed to catch it catching!  There was a lot of catching apparently.

This is one of the most time consuming photographs I've ever taken.  It took about 20 attempts, using a huge number of different settings.

I don't know if I even like it :/

Anyway, for those who are interested:
Night time settings, 1 second exposure, resting on a fence around the lake!

So when it got dark we headed to this crazy loud noise, that turned out to be a free concert!  Amazing!

Unfortunately we only arrived for the last few acts, but these guys to the left here were definitely my favourites.

They have a man playing an electric ghost instrument on the left there, that's just awesome.  Check out my youtube videos for the video of their performance.

This is a better photo, and is another case of being extremely annoyed by the process of trying to take it.  So much effort went into this...

We liked this band for two reasons.  Firstly, and most importantly, the guy in the pink A: had the stones to wear a pink shell suit and B: He did a rock out thing at the end of their first song, where he stood  at the front of the stage pretending he was metallica or something.  Awesome.

Secondly and least importantly, the guy in  white had a pretty good voice.

It's a dark picture, but they're still posing like the cool dudes they are.  The guy in black was the bass guitarist, and seems to be fulfilling the bass guitarist stereotypes here.

And has become customary in my posts, we end today with a comedy picture.

Suntory is a beverage/snacks company here in Japan, and they make everything from beer to packed lunches.

Their best product however, is this; BOSS coffee.  It has an old 50's style american dad with a pipe, and the face they put to this?  The sidekick to will smith in 'men in black.'  Tommy Lee Jones himself.  Wearing the men in black suit and everything...  Epic.